Sometimes, my clients want to avoid legal conflicts because they would be difficult or costly. I certainly understand that, and sometimes I agree with them whole-heartedly.
There are, however, some times where the conflict truly needs to happen. Often, a parent is engaging in a behavior that is simply harmful to the rest of the family and action needs to be taken.
When people struggle with this, I often have this discussion with them:
Eventually, your divorce will be over. It will recede into the distant past. A new normal will gradually assert itself. Life will go on. Your children will grow into adults. As adults, your children will get more and more perspective on who and what you were as a parent to them. They will gain greater insight into how your past, in ways, becomes their present.
They inevitably will start asking you hard questions about what you did and why. In homes where one of the spouses was physically or emotionally abusive, the question is often:
"What did you do to protect me?"
Often the more tragic one is:
"Why did you let things go on as long as they did?"
These are brutally hard questions. The answer is rarely simple.
What abused parents do (or fail to do) is a combination of psychological, physical, and financial factors. In many cases, it takes a long time for a parent to recognize an unhealthy cycle and get to a emotional, physical, or financial place where they can put a stop to it. Some parents never get to that place where they have all the resources needed to address the problem.
For many of my clients, the means to address the problem of an abusive parent on the other side is there. It is simply a matter of willingness to enter into the conflict, even if it is uncomfortable or costly.
When they vacillate, I often ask them to think about what they might say to their adult children in years to come when those questions above show up. When my clients picture these discussions, things like "it was expensive" or "I did not want to upset the apple cart" ring hollow when they imagine those conversations.
Using that exercise to think long term is often very helpful in clarifying a divorcing parent's priorities.
I hope it is helpful to you as well.
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